Avaya Communicating on All Fronts

By Paula Musich |
Posted 2008-03-17

Avaya Communicating on All Fronts

Avaya on March 17 will outline its most
comprehensive set of unified communications products and services to date when
it introduces at VoiceCon in Orlando, Fla., a new presence server,
a multiprotocol UC client, a series of UC consulting services and six vertical
UC systems aimed at specific types of workers.

Avaya's new Intelligent Presence Server is
unique in its ability to integrate presence information from multiple sources,
said Diane Shariff, director of UC at Avaya, in Milpitas, Calif.

"You can see presence from other applications
and from different states," she said.
"For example, if a call comes into the contact center and the agent
doesn't have the answer, enterprises can use presence capabilities to be able to
find that right person based on [predefined] rules and then connect them with
the customer."

The six new offerings, which Shariff said are
priced at under $100 per employee, are designed specifically for teleworkers,
mobile employees, home-based contact center agents, SMB (small and midsize
business) employees, and employees at retail and bank branches.

Nick Lippis, principal at Lippis Consulting in
Hingham, Mass., said the server provides an architecture to link presence from
multiple sources, such as Office Communications Server and Exchange from
Microsoft, and Domino and Sametime from IBM, as well as public instant
messaging services such as AIM and Google, allowing users
to see who is available from within a single interface, rather than having to
look at five different IM or UC clients.

"This is a big deal," said Lippis.

It can also be used as a development platform
for creating presence-aware applications.

It is due in May with initial integration with
Microsoft's Office Communicator. Avaya will add integrations with IBM Lotus Sametime and
Microsoft Exchange later this year, along with a software development kit for
Avaya DevConnect developer partners.

Avaya will also launch a UC client that can work
in multivendor environments and can act as a front end to other systems such as
Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007.

The Avaya one-X Communicator acts as a sort of
uber user interface to multiple communications tools, including desktop video,
visual voice mail, presence, e-mail, IM, directories and contact history. It provides one-click launch for any type of
communication.

The initial release, which supports both H.323
and Session Initiation Protocols, works with telephony presence in Avaya's
Communication Manager and IM presence from Microsoft's OCS 2007. Additional integrations are planned for later
release.

It also works with Polycom video processing
technology to allow such functions as transfer, forward, conference and hold to
be applied to desktop video.

It is due in May from Avaya, as well as partner
Lenovo in versions that run on the ThinkPad.

New UC Vertical Offerings

With its six new vertical UC offerings that
package products and services together, Avaya took a rifle approach to pick off
opportunities for UC deployments aimed at specific types of workers.

The Intelligent Presence Server can aggregate
presence information from telephony, desktop or application sources from Avaya
as well as third parties, including Microsoft and IBM.

The Unified Communications Solutions for
teleworkers seeks to give those remote users the same communications experience
they would have in an office setting. Functions supported include
collaboration, click to communicate, desktop video and more. It works with a PC
or a Mac and integrates with IBM Lotus Sametime and the
Microsoft Office Communicator. "You can
plug in our VPN remote phone into your home office router, and it works just
like an office phone," said Shariff.

The UC Solution for mobile workers focuses on
wireless integration and works with some 500 different handheld devices,
including the Apple iPhone. The Avaya Home Agent solution is aimed at allowing
contact center operators to work from home and deliver the same level of
performance. The Unified Communications Solution for SMBs allows employees to
work remotely but remain instantly accessible.

The Intelligent Branch for Retail offering
integrates with existing communications infrastructure such as call boxes, and
the Intelligent Branch for Banking integrates with IBM's Lotus Sametime to
emphasize improved customer service.

Lippis said the Intelligent Branch offerings
allow banks and retailers to use UC to improve the customer experience by
addressing their key concerns, which include lack of skilled staff in the
branch, difficult-to-maintain customer loyalty and high employee turnover.

The new Avaya UC Services consulting practice is
focused on helping customers plan, design and deploy UC projects. Planning
takes into account the different types of workers that will use a UC system and
determine what types of applications are most appropriate for those users.
Design focuses on technical requirements and takes into account equipment,
carrier plans and applications. Integration and Implementation services include
pretesting technology in Avaya's Solutions Labs as well as deployment services.